Tuesday, September 2, 2014

For lots of folks, Labor Day signals
the summer’s end. By the calendar,
there’s still three weeks before the autumn equinox appears with its seasonal
shift. But really, playtime is over.

And actually, that’s always
true during the last month of summer, when the sun moves into Virgo. The emphasis shifts to organizing, fixing,
mending, getting needed work done. And
as this September begins, Mars and Saturn – the planet of action and the planet
of responsibility – are together in the hyper-focused sign Scorpio. So it’s a time when everybody is getting down
to business.

Of course, one can be very
business-like, very efficient, and still not get anything done. Today’s paper tells the story of the hundreds of National Guard troops who’ve been deployed to the Texas border, and who
spend their days in sweltering body armor, staring at the brush. Bored, uncomfortable people with guns are
never a particularly good idea.

When it comes to promoting
his presidential ambitions, Gov. Rick Perry, on the other hand, is being very
efficient. He’s using handy, available
resources to demonstrate what a serious fellow he is, when it comes to border
security. A good politician knows how to
read the headlines, sort out the things that make people feel insecure, and
make a big show of addressing those insecurities.

So, yes, Mars and Saturn
together make for efficiency, but even though their sign, Scorpio, promotes
definite action, it’s not a practical or logical sign. Like all the water signs, it’s about
underlying feelings – including fears, hatreds, resentment, anxiety, and
paranoia. We are all knotted up with
these things, but people are more conscious of these inner demons when there
are strong placements in Scorpio. The
demons are more likely to take shape.

With the Mars/Saturn
conjunction, some strong walls can be built – walls of distrust, anger and
prejudice. Mars militarizes things,
adding way more combat gear than anyone could need, whether the enemy is a kid
walking down the middle of the street, or one crossing a river. Saturn affirms structure, discipline, and responsibility, and tends towards inflexible rules.

So there is an order to
things. There’s a very strong
exoskeleton, and a definite chain of command. But the center is still mush. That swampy center is the central human fear
of anything or anyone different. And
without a strong center, there can be no real security.

Another thing that’s emerging
these days is the question of entitlement.
This has become a more prominent issue in the last few years, especially
with Occupy Wall Street’s emphasis on the 99%. But now questions around entitlement are being
demonstrated more openly, with Jupiter moving through the royal sign Leo.

And there’s an ongoing
tension between Jupiter in Leo and Pluto in Capricorn - a conflict between earth and fire,
between pragmatism and glory.

Pluto in Capricorn is
basically pragmatic, and entitlement is enormously wasteful. In fact, those who are entitled are
encouraged – you might even say required – to waste resources. I know this, as a citizen of the US. It takes a lot more effort to minimize one’s
carbon footprint than to go along with the usual spend-and-throw-away
routine. There’s often no way to repair, to share, or
even to surround yourself with things that will last. And so I join everyone else, tossing out things
that represent precious natural resources and the lives of laborers.

The less entitlement there
is, the more equable the distribution – not only of things, but of power and
choices – the less likely there is to be waste.
There really is enough to go around.
I believe that, although this truth has yet never been tested in the
history of the world.

What Jupiter in Leo gives to
the world is glory, glamor, and glitz, and we’ve all gladly embraced it,
allowing Ali Baba fantasies to light up the more boring corners of our lives. It seems we need kings, celebrities, and the
uber-wealthy to embody this fantasy. But
maybe Pluto in Capricorn is saying that we no longer have time for this
childish play-acting, in the face of a world which isn’t working all that well.
Maybe, when hundreds of thousands of
fish are floating in Mexican lakes, when colonies of honeybees are dying all
over the world, when monarch butterflies have become rare, there is a need to
get serious.

But if Jupiter in Leo’s sin
is conspicuous consumption, Pluto in Capricorn’s sin is a tendency to a wintery
austerity. And along with this, there’s
an automatic deference to tradition. Some
traditions are useful, and others – not so much - but there’s a large bloc that
believes everything was simpler way back when, when everybody knew their
place. Tea Partiers and Islamic
Jihadists have a lot in common, wanting women in kitchens/veils and gay people
invisible/dead.

The answer is to find the
best expression of both these influences.
Pluto in Capricorn is essentially practical and responsible, and can
give some useful answers to the new questions confronting our species. How can we live simply, but in a way that’s
different from our fairy-tale versions of the way our ancestors lived?

And Jupiter in Leo has a lot
to contribute too. Leo is the most
flamboyantly creative sign in the zodiac, and we will always need musicians,
poets, story-tellers, actors, and comedians.
And they are everywhere. We don’t
need to take a few of these and turn them into gods or kings. We can move towards a world in which everyone
has what they need, and there is still plenty of time both to create art and to
enjoy it.

This world is possible. And, as in every period of heightened
tension, we’re pushed to figure out how to make it happen. How can we live another way? How can we be both creative and
clear-headed? What is the secret to our
continued survival on this planet? There’s a middle way, somewhere between
punitive austerity and careless indulgence.
And as the sun moves towards its point of balance at the equinox, it’s
time to find it.